TLJ throne room fight scene

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Re: TLJ throne room fight scene

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Civil War Man wrote: 2019-07-15 10:17am Depends on how those elements are done. The casual audience may not give a damn about the narrative, but if Disney basically just serves up the same thing over and over again, that casual audience will get bored and move onto something else long before the dedicated fans do, specifically because they lack that investment in the setting. The fans may be more dissatisfied with individual entries, but they generally will stick with it unless the new entries really start repeatedly and consistently alienating them. Of course, for some segments of the fan base we may be already approaching that point, but that's another discussion entirely.
See the declining performances of the Transformers movies, especially the recent movies (minus Bumblebee). There are certain kinds of genre that might allow you to get away with the same kind of plot set-up ( namely spy movies), but an utter disregard to consequences of prior films in sequels can result in audience getting less invested in the franchise ( see Kingsmen)

In spy-films, you can always have a new evil villain threatening the world again, because most of the spy films is about stopping them before things become too bad for the world at large. But a franchise like Star Wars will exhaust the audience if there is no respite from never-ending galactic war.

Stopping a minor imperial warlord is one thing, having to rebuild the Republic yet again after Superweapon mk 10 blew up the Republic's capital once again is going to make people roll their eyes. Plenty of Hollywood visual spectacles have bombed in recent years because the audience simply aren't invested in the setting. ID4:2 bombed badly because no one was really that interested in the setting.

Straha wrote: 2019-07-14 12:51pm Contrast that to the PT with the inanity of Darth Maul, the massive story incongruence of Dooku vs. Yoda, or the tediousness of Mustafar. If you stuck through the PT as a 'fan' you're almost by definition a fan of sci-fi spectacle. So it's no surprise that people act weird when a fight like TLJ (or even TFA) tries to go back to emphasizing the story importance of the duel over the perceived spectacle.
I disagree. I think some OT fans are very much viewing things with rose-tinted lens, because they chose not to read any form of symbolism around the fight in the PT. I think some OT fans are very easily influenced by a sense of dogmaticism when it comes to Star Wars, and view any deviation from the formula established by the OT as "lacking in substance" far too easily.

The scene on Genonsis with an army of Jedi being easily gunned down by droids is a perfect reminder of how flashy lightsaber skills only goes so far. Despite all of the Jedi's skills in the PT era, it was ultimately not enough to win against the dark side.
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Re: TLJ throne room fight scene

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ray245 wrote: 2019-07-15 01:35pm I disagree. I think some OT fans are very much viewing things with rose-tinted lens, because they chose not to read any form of symbolism around the fight in the PT.
Serious question: What do you think is the symbolic meaning of the Dooku vs. Yoda fight? Or the Maul vs. Obi-Wan + Qui-Gon fight?

I think some OT fans are very easily influenced by a sense of dogmaticism when it comes to Star Wars, and view any deviation from the formula established by the OT as "lacking in substance" far too easily.
I think there's a partial truth to this. Certainly people do place the OT on a pedestal and whine about things not being the same, We can have a deeper discussion on the meaning of Fandom and whether or not Star Wars was something where the fans were truly into the message of the OT or the Spectacle, and also if the period between the OT and the PT (and the PT and the ST) changed the fandom, especially in the context of the EU novels. But, to echo some stuff said earlier, I don't think people are critiquing the TLJ for a lack of substance, I think almost everyone recognizes that there wasn't just a real attempt at a message and deeper meaning but that it's also the most earnest attempt at telling 'a story' since RotJ. I think people generally critique it for either (rightly or wrongly) failing in its execution or for the substance of the story it was trying to tell. Whatever you think of those criticisms, they are meaningfully different than the ones raised against the PT.
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Re: TLJ throne room fight scene

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Straha wrote: 2019-07-15 01:45pm Serious question: What do you think is the symbolic meaning of the Dooku vs. Yoda fight? Or the Maul vs. Obi-Wan + Qui-Gon fight?
It is possible to read the fight of Yoda vs Dooku as a fight that is ultimately pointless despite Yoda's superiority in lightsaber skills. Yoda was handily beating Dooku, but he failed to win the fight as Dooku was able to exploit the Jedi's value on compassion to get away and kick-start the Clone Wars.

Maul vs Obi-Wan/Qui-Gon can be read as a scene in which Obi-Wan managed to grow into a Jedi-Knight of his own. With the death of his Master, Obi-Wan must learn to fight against the dark side on his own. ( If one retrospectively add the survival of Maul into the picture, the failure of Obi-Wan to truly defeat Maul can be read as a metaphor for his failure to truly stop the dark side from influencing his student).

I think there's a partial truth to this. Certainly people do place the OT on a pedestal and whine about things not being the same, We can have a deeper discussion on the meaning of Fandom and whether or not Star Wars was something where the fans were truly into the message of the OT or the Spectacle, and also if the period between the OT and the PT (and the PT and the ST) changed the fandom, especially in the context of the EU novels. But, to echo some stuff said earlier, I don't think people are critiquing the TLJ for a lack of substance, I think almost everyone recognizes that there wasn't just a real attempt at a message and deeper meaning but that it's also the most earnest attempt at telling 'a story' since RotJ. I think people generally critique it for either (rightly or wrongly) failing in its execution or for the substance of the story it was trying to tell. Whatever you think of those criticisms, they are meaningfully different than the ones raised against the PT.
I'm not exactly who you call a fan for TLJ, and I do recognise it is trying to do something with the story. But the idea that the sequels somehow recaptured the themes and deeper messages of the OT is misleading in my opinion. I think the sequels tried to emulate the style of the OT in many ways, but it did not really capture the underlying messages of the OT.

George Lucas lackluster response towards the Sequels ( he really really disliked the direction they took with TFA and called Disney White slavers) suggest there is some element of truth to this. If the the creator of Star Wars think the new movies failed to head in a direction he is comfortable with, then it might imply they don't quite capture the full underlying message of Lucas' Star Wars.
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Re: TLJ throne room fight scene

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ray245 wrote: 2019-07-15 01:59pm
Serious question: What do you think is the symbolic meaning of the Dooku vs. Yoda fight? Or the Maul vs. Obi-Wan + Qui-Gon fight?
It is possible to read the fight of Yoda vs Dooku as a fight that is ultimately pointless despite Yoda's superiority in lightsaber skills. Yoda was handily beating Dooku, but he failed to win the fight as Dooku was able to exploit the Jedi's value on compassion to get away and kick-start the Clone Wars.

Maul vs Obi-Wan/Qui-Gon can be read as a scene in which Obi-Wan managed to grow into a Jedi-Knight of his own. With the death of his Master, Obi-Wan must learn to fight against the dark side on his own. ( If one retrospectively add the survival of Maul into the picture, the failure of Obi-Wan to truly defeat Maul can be read as a metaphor for his failure to truly stop the dark side from influencing his student).
I realize I am picking this back up after a while, but... well, whatever.

Look, just on a basic level, that's not symbolism. Symbolism is the way that non-textual visuals are used to create and craft ideas and readings of the story. So, to just use Star Wars, the way that Vader is shot in shadows and in the dark in the ESB fight scenes helps to create this sense of him as a super-natural force who is just fucking with Luke until the final moments when, suddenly, everything is in full-light on the catwalk. Then Vader doesn't just use his force powers but just mercilessly beats Luke down before revealing himself as Luke's father. Before he was a hidden figure, now in the light he is revealed as what he is both in terms of strength and position re: Luke.

The RotJ fight scene is, maybe, the high point of symbolism in the OT. Vader goads Luke by discussing his sister, Luke snaps and turns into a murderous killing machine until he cuts off Vader's hand, looks at the cybernetics, looks at his own hand, and turns off the lightsaber. The message is told entirely without dialogue: Luke is an emotional character driven by empathy, when he imagines his sister turned he flips, when he makes the empathetic connection to his father he engages in self-reflection and realizes what he's done, and finally (fully) embraces the Jedi message of wars not making one great. All of that is shown, not told.

There is no symbolic messaging in the Dooku/Yoda fight scene. No extra-textual message, it's just... a fight. We can attempt to read meaning into that story, but it's not symbollism but a retroactive justification for how the fight changes our reading of the story. Ditto your explanation of the Maul/Obi-Wan scene. In the shooting of the fight Obi-Wan doesn't change. His fighting style before and after Qui-Gon's death is the exact same, the shooting style (bland wide-angle shots with occasional closeups) doesn't change, no story is told beyond the bare essentials.




I'm not exactly who you call a fan for TLJ, and I do recognise it is trying to do something with the story. But the idea that the sequels somehow recaptured the themes and deeper messages of the OT is misleading in my opinion. I think the sequels tried to emulate the style of the OT in many ways, but it did not really capture the underlying messages of the OT.
Luke's story in TLJ certainly recaptures the meaning of the Jedi as told in the OT. The value of friendship that was a hallmark of the OT and barely present in the PT is absolutely back in the Sequels. We can quibble about whether or not this truly recaptures the OT as a whole, and I don't think it necessarily does, but it's certainly there.
George Lucas lackluster response towards the Sequels ( he really really disliked the direction they took with TFA and called Disney White slavers) suggest there is some element of truth to this. If the the creator of Star Wars think the new movies failed to head in a direction he is comfortable with, then it might imply they don't quite capture the full underlying message of Lucas' Star Wars.
Yeah, not to go all Death of the Author but going by the prequels and his changes to the OT I don't think George Lucas understood the full meaning of Star Wars post-ANH.
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Re: TLJ throne room fight scene

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Straha wrote: 2019-08-07 12:51pm I realize I am picking this back up after a while, but... well, whatever.

Look, just on a basic level, that's not symbolism. Symbolism is the way that non-textual visuals are used to create and craft ideas and readings of the story. So, to just use Star Wars, the way that Vader is shot in shadows and in the dark in the ESB fight scenes helps to create this sense of him as a super-natural force who is just fucking with Luke until the final moments when, suddenly, everything is in full-light on the catwalk. Then Vader doesn't just use his force powers but just mercilessly beats Luke down before revealing himself as Luke's father. Before he was a hidden figure, now in the light he is revealed as what he is both in terms of strength and position re: Luke.

The RotJ fight scene is, maybe, the high point of symbolism in the OT. Vader goads Luke by discussing his sister, Luke snaps and turns into a murderous killing machine until he cuts off Vader's hand, looks at the cybernetics, looks at his own hand, and turns off the lightsaber. The message is told entirely without dialogue: Luke is an emotional character driven by empathy, when he imagines his sister turned he flips, when he makes the empathetic connection to his father he engages in self-reflection and realizes what he's done, and finally (fully) embraces the Jedi message of wars not making one great. All of that is shown, not told.

There is no symbolic messaging in the Dooku/Yoda fight scene. No extra-textual message, it's just... a fight. We can attempt to read meaning into that story, but it's not symbollism but a retroactive justification for how the fight changes our reading of the story. Ditto your explanation of the Maul/Obi-Wan scene. In the shooting of the fight Obi-Wan doesn't change. His fighting style before and after Qui-Gon's death is the exact same, the shooting style (bland wide-angle shots with occasional closeups) doesn't change, no story is told beyond the bare essentials.
You're too focused on the significance shots of a fight scene, and perhaps ignoring the importance of the fight choreography. A lot of westerns like to be snobbish about flashy fight choreography but the fight choreography are very often framed in a way to tell a narrative of its own. Chinese wushu choreography is very much a form of a narrative in the form of a dance. It was in the prequel era that we saw the creation of official dueling-style in Star Wars, but that's because the prequel movies actually featured choreography that reflected the personality of the characters in different way.

I'm very used to seeing fight choreography as a story of its own because of my experience with wushu (I formally practised it for a short while when I was quite young, namely Peking Opera wushu), so I am very used to reading the choreography of a fight scene. I think westerners, because of the different cultural context, aren't taught to read fight choreography as a narrative of its own.

How much can one read into the symbolism of a fight scene is debatable and subjective to a person's experience. So while I think American and western audience might overlook certain aspects of symbolism that comes from the choreography of a fight scene, I think I can read more into their symbolism.

How Yoda chose to fight Dooku and how Dooku fought against Yoda is itself a story with a fair bit of meaning. Yoda was the aggressive duelist, while Dooku was the elegant and slower duelist. I can read the fight as an inversion of the battle between light and dark siders. Yet despite all of Yoda's aggression, he could not put a stop to Dooku. All of Yoda's skills and abilities are ultimately fruitless against a darksider willing to take the extra step to win. Dooku was losing the fight, but he got what he wanted by escaping because Yoda will not let Obi-Wan and Anakin die. The compassion of the Jedi Order was used against them by the Sith.

I don't think I can convince you with my arguments, but I think that's because I am rooted from a fundamentally different perspective from yours. You want symbolism to be far more explicit, with nicely framed shots that can be used to symbolise deeper meanings. I tend to read the movement of a scene as being more important that certain nicely framed shots. A film is not a painting or drawing. A film is a bunch of moving pictures. So the movement that the characters made is just as important as a nicely framed still shot.

Luke's story in TLJ certainly recaptures the meaning of the Jedi as told in the OT. The value of friendship that was a hallmark of the OT and barely present in the PT is absolutely back in the Sequels. We can quibble about whether or not this truly recaptures the OT as a whole, and I don't think it necessarily does, but it's certainly there.
I don't think the theme of friendship is the core theme of the OT. It is certainly an important hallmark, but to call it as important when Luke was separated from Han and Leia most of the time is making it to be a far bigger deal than it actually is. I think the theme of the Star Wars franchise has always been about the ability of an individual to achieve "enlightenment" in some form or another.

The thesis of the ST movie is about how Luke didn't actually achieve true enlightenment after ROTJ. That to me is a biggest mistake of the ST era as a whole. And the main reason for this was because Western writing remained quite fixated on the need for conflict to tell a narrative. In order for Luke's story to generate interest, the default assumption is there must be some sort of new conflict for him to go though.

This is not necessarily the only way to tell a story. Maybe for a western audience used to the concept of a 3 act structure, and are taught from young to expect conflict in any story, this is how you experience story-telling. But I think there are certainly different ways you can go about crafting a narrative.

"The significance of plot without conflict" is a different way of telling a narrative.

https://stilleatingoranges.tumblr.com/p ... t-conflict
In the West, plot is commonly thought to revolve around conflict: a confrontation between two or more elements, in which one ultimately dominates the other. The standard three- and five-act plot structures–which permeate Western media–have conflict written into their very foundations. A “problem” appears near the end of the first act; and, in the second act, the conflict generated by this problem takes center stage. Conflict is used to create reader involvement even by many post-modern writers, whose work otherwise defies traditional structure.

The necessity of conflict is preached as a kind of dogma by contemporary writers’ workshops and Internet “guides” to writing. A plot without conflict is considered dull; some even go so far as to call it impossible. This has influenced not only fiction, but writing in general–arguably even philosophy. Yet, is there any truth to this belief? Does plot necessarily hinge on conflict? No. Such claims are a product of the West’s insularity. For countless centuries, Chinese and Japanese writers have used a plot structure that does not have conflict “built in”, so to speak. Rather, it relies on exposition and contrast to generate interest. This structure is known as kishōtenketsu.

Kishōtenketsu contains four acts: introduction, development, twist and reconciliation. The basics of the story–characters, setting, etc.–are established in the first act and developed in the second. No major changes occur until the third act, in which a new, often surprising element is introduced. The third act is the core of the plot, and it may be thought of as a kind of structural non sequitur. The fourth act draws a conclusion from the contrast between the first two “straight” acts and the disconnected third, thereby reconciling them into a coherent whole. Kishōtenketsu is probably best known to Westerners as the structure of Japanese yonkoma (four-panel) manga; and, with this in mind, our artist has kindly provided a simple comic to illustrate the concept.
While you can certainly made an argument that Star Wars as an mainly American franchise cannot abandon the need for conflict in its storytelling because this is expected from its Anglo-American audience, I think this limits the potential of storytelling opportunities for a franchise like Star Wars, and you will be forced to go against the central themes of the prior SW movies. Which is the idea that a character's personal conflict can have an endpoint if the character achieved some sort of enlightenment and move past endless conflict. It might certainly sound boring to you and possibly most western audience, but I think boringness if underrated in western story-telling.

Yeah, not to go all Death of the Author but going by the prequels and his changes to the OT I don't think George Lucas understood the full meaning of Star Wars post-ANH.
Whether he fully understood it is beside the point. I think he still had a vision for what SW is about, and I prefer his vision ( which is subject to change over the years, but it still retain a degree of consistency). I think the fandom as a whole is not much better than George Lucas in understanding the meaning of the Star Wars franchise. If anything, I think most fans in general are terrible at articulating why they like Star Wars. I think what happened with the new movies is that they can superficially resemble Star Wars ( see "updated visuals" and retelling the exact same narrative in EP 7), but fundamentally misses the deeper themes and meanings of Star Wars.

George Lucas had very, very odd vision of what Star Wars is about, in contrast to the expectation of most fans. I think most fans are still too blinded by the sheer fun they experienced in watching the OT as a child to fully articulate why they really enjoyed the Star Wars franchise. For example, while a bunch of fans might bitched endlessly about how the prequels were horrible and a waste of time, a whole new generation of fans got into Star Wars via the prequels. So even if the OT fans hated the PT, George Lucas still created something that could engage the interest of young audience and get them interested in Star Wars and stayed on as fans.

While it is fair to say a number of fans didn't enjoy the changes Lucas made to the franchise, I still think Lucas' vision of Star Wars will remain the most attractive part of the franchise to some fans like me. I enjoy the uniqueness and quirkiness of George Lucas over the vision of fans who seek to recreate the OT.

I find the desire to remain orthodox to particular portrayal of the Star Wars universe in the OT boring and stale.
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Re: TLJ throne room fight scene

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To me, Star Wars is basically four things:

1. There's a metaphysical dualism between the Light and Dark Sides of the Force. They've played around with that a bit (generally in the EU and generally to the detriment of the franchise, in my opinion), but there's always that underlying divide to some extent. Note that this does not mean individual characters are pure good or pure evil (see Vader, Lando, A New Hope Han, etc.). But Good and Evil exist in the setting, and they're more than just words.

2. This conflict is personified by the conflict between individual Force users. In the PT and OT, that's the story of the fall and rebirth of the Jedi and Republic, as personified by the fall and redemption of Anakin Skywalker.

3. Well, its right there in the title: Star. Wars. Conflict on a grand, interstellar scale.

4. Spectacle, but spectacle that has a believability and scope to it that feels epic. This can be somewhat subjective or intangible, and is the hardest quality to nail down. But that sweeping score and that vast galaxy full of strange creatures and worlds that nonetheless have enough detail and consistency to feel real.

Pretty much hit those four points (you can probably get away with three of them if you do them well), and you've got yourself a decent Star Wars movie.
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Re: TLJ throne room fight scene

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To most vocal OT fans, I'm pretty sure its just "like the OT viewed through childhood nostalgia goggles". But that's an increasingly-shrinking percentage of the fanbase. Say what you will about the PT and ST, they both helped to bring in a new generation of fans, and those are the people who will be driving the franchise in ten-twenty years.
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Re: TLJ throne room fight scene

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The Romulan Republic wrote: 2019-08-08 08:34pm To most vocal OT fans, I'm pretty sure its just "like the OT viewed through childhood nostalgia goggles". But that's an increasingly-shrinking percentage of the fanbase. Say what you will about the PT and ST, they both helped to bring in a new generation of fans, and those are the people who will be driving the franchise in ten-twenty years.
Those fanbase want everyone else to agree with their vision of Star Wars. It's why all the online fans kept shaming people for liking the Prequels for years, and saying anyone who likes the prequels must be a bunch of easily pleased idiots.
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